Well I had had it with the enigma that is seasonal hydei production. After another spring of terrible yields I am contemplating a shift to Turkish gliders as my main food source since they have been great producers, and bean beetles as my large supplemental food item. This helps simplify my bug rack rotation as well.

Yeah I ditched the golden hydei a few months back because their yields were worse than black hydei. I've been getting lower yields again this spring on the black hydei to the point where I was not feeding off them - I was just using them to sustain cultures. It seemed to happen each spring as the seasons change but I am no longer patient enough to wait out a few month drop in production. Anyhow this appears to be it for me and hydei . Now bean beetles are a piece of cake lol

I just do 2 cultures of Wingless, 2 cultures of Turkish (which are by far the fastest producing) and one culture with a Turkish/Hydei mixture. The combination of the quick reproducing Turkish seem to out-compete the mites, keeping them at bay so the Hydei can steadily produce much later. In general Hydei are a pain in the A$$.

I love Hydei---You just need the right media. I know they are a pain in the ass to get going----They are also dirty!! It could also be the DNA--Hydei need to be recycled almost every month to every other month to get booms back to where they need to be....So if the media does not have enough anti microbial properties to it the boom will severely be affected. I also noticed with Hydei that the Golden variety seem to produce better, and are more forgiving with not so great medias.

Here is one of my Hydei cultures: I typically get about 3 booms out of mine--I keep mine in a bin, with one other Hydei culture stacked on top, with a 100% open lid. I use mite paper and provent a mite, and cycle out my Hydei DNA every 30 days (I have to as I make 250 Hydei a month).

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. To rare to live and to rare to die."

Glad I read this, thanks. I'm about to order my first ff cultures to get established before I get frogs. I was going to order one of each but now think I'll stick with the melanogasters. I've yet to see turkish gliders offered for sale. Where do you buy them?

Gope wrote:Glad I read this, thanks. I'm about to order my first ff cultures to get established before I get frogs. I was going to order one of each but now think I'll stick with the melanogasters. I've yet to see turkish gliders offered for sale. Where do you buy them?

I got my gliders at a local exotics shop. I started with wingless melanogaster which are slower moving but not quite as productive as Turks IME but melanogasters are a great starter fly. I much prefer trading feeders with local hobbyists - you make frog friends, get your seed feeders and find a backup supply for food when your cultures crash . Try a post in the want ads or order online like Phil suggested. Good luck!

joneill809 wrote:I got my gliders at a local exotics shop. I started with wingless melanogaster which are slower moving but not quite as productive as Turks IME but melanogasters are a great starter fly. I much prefer trading feeders with local hobbyists - you make frog friends, get your seed feeders and find a backup supply for food when your cultures crash . Try a post in the want ads or order online like Phil suggested. Good luck!

Thanks for the replies. I would definitely rather find local hobbyists for resources and eventually offer in return. Feel free to pm if anyone is reading. Thanks Philsuma. I am in Washington. I checked their site but they only list Hydei & melanogaster. I'll contact them and see if they may have them in the future.

joneill809 wrote:I got my gliders at a local exotics shop. I started with wingless melanogaster which are slower moving but not quite as productive as Turks IME but melanogasters are a great starter fly. I much prefer trading feeders with local hobbyists - you make frog friends, get your seed feeders and find a backup supply for food when your cultures crash . Try a post in the want ads or order online like Phil suggested. Good luck!

Thanks for the replies. I would definitely rather find local hobbyists for resources and eventually offer in return. Feel free to pm if anyone is reading. Thanks Philsuma. I am in Washington. I checked their site but they only list Hydei & melanogaster. I'll contact them and see if they may have them in the future.

Melanogaster is fine. As good or better than Turkish glider. No worries.

I agree Phil,the melanogaster for me,produce as well if not better than the Turkish gliders.I also agree with Josh H. on the Golden Hydei -they seem to out produce the Black Hydei by a fair amount.The thing I dislike about Hydei is the stench period they go through about a week before morphing out!!!

I have the same problem with hydei occassionaly .. last year not as much as this year. This year was so bad that my hydei cultures all had to get scrapped..

My turkish gliders produce much, much faster than my regular melos and cultures last a whole lot longer.. likely just a media thing as the majority seems to have the opposite.. the only frogs I keep that much on hydei are my terribilis, which I can keep on melos easily. My collection is pretty much strictly thumbs so I just scrapped hydei all together, recently.

As of today...no more hydei. Twelve Turkish glider cultures per week - 4 serilite bins with a bed of DG, rotated weekly (48 cultures on hand and I'm usually feeding off the oldest 12 - 24). I found it easier to control mites by isolating each week in its own bin, that way I don't have older cultures contaminating my new ones. Those little buggers got really good at building corpse bridges across the DG to get from old cultures to new ones .

My production is pretty stable now. I'm feeding 28 tincs/galacts and 6 thumbnails on that in my permanent collection. I usually have 30 froglets around at any given time. I do have a few bean beetle cultures that I keep going as supplemental feeders for the Robertus.